interviews – Australian Science

The Highlights of 2013

Danica Radovanovic — Fri, 20 Dec 2013 10:04:12 +0000

This year our writers churned out a host of fantastic articles, including a series of posts dedicated to women in space, written by Sharon Harnett. One of the most notable of the series was all about Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman astronaut. This year was the 50th anniversary of her historic spaceflight. We also had a few great interviews, including one with Henry Reich, creator of the YouTube series Minute Physics. We’ve managed a number of achievements. We’ve helped several science writers gain exposure and reputation world wide, we’ve appeared on ABC’s Newsline, and we’ve been listed in TED’s top 10 science and technology websites.

So, in no particular order, here are ten of our favourite articles from 2013. We hope you’ll enjoy these stories. Stay curious and scientifically passionate!

A Tale of Two STEM Women by Buddhini Samarasinghe

When I first read this story, I was struck by how often we focus on happy stories like Marie Curie’s, and how the story of someone like Clara Immerwahr remains largely forgotten. She had a tremendous amount of potential, as evidenced by her being the first female to receive a Ph.D at the University of Breslau, an endeavor that is certainly not for the faint-hearted even now. One can only wonder at the ‘might-have-beens’ if she had had the same support and encouragement that Marie Curie did, if she had not married Haber, or if Haber had been a different kind of person. These examples highlight that talent alone is not enough; we need to encourage that talent by promoting equality and recognizing our own biases when it comes to women in STEM. Read more>>

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman (in science) by Amy Reichelt

Obtaining a senior academic position for any aspiring young academic is one of those uphill struggles with roads lined with self doubt, setbacks and sacrifice. Some call it the way to tenure-track, in my mind it’s one of those ill-defined paths through a potentially haunted forest inhabited with monsters, gigantic poisonous spiders and creepy people who communicate by screaming. It can be harder still to even reach that point, particularly for young women. While the number of women professors in Europe, N. America and Australia has increased over the last decade, universities still have a disproportionately small number of women in senior professorial positions. Read more>>

Spiders on Mars? No, An Australian Radio Telescope! by Elizabeth Howell

The MWA is a powerful telescope in its own right, but what is even more exciting is it will form part of a larger project in the coming years. The Square Kilometre Array will link radio telescopes on two continents — Australia and Africa — to get a fine look at the sky in radio wavelengths. MWA is just one part of this array. There will also be dish receptors in eight countries in Africa, with the core and some mid-frequency aperture arrays in South Africa’s Karoo desert. Read more>>

Hopeful results in latest HIV vaccine trial, but many hurdles to overcome yet by David Borradale

A HIV vaccine, known as SAV001-H has shown promising results in an early clinical trial, with no adverse effects reported and importantly, a significant increase reported in HIV specific antibodies in participants who received the vaccine. In this trial, 33 HIV positive participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups: half into a treatment group receiving the vaccine and half into a placebo group who did not receive the vaccine. The participants were followed up at regular periods, testing safety of the vaccine and antibody response over a one year period. Read more>>

Are Australians Really Getting Dumber? by Magdeline Lum

The Australian Academy of Science has found that when it comes to science Australians are getting dumber in its latest report on science literacy. Compared to three years ago, less people in Australia know that the Earth’s orbit of the sun takes one year. Among 18-24 year olds 62% surveyed knew the correct answer, a fall from 74% three years ago. Other results would also send scientists into a tail spin of despair, with 27% of respondents saying that the earliest humans lived at the same time as dinosaurs, though an improvement from 30% of respondents in 2010 who thought this. What does this all say? If you take the face value of the press release and the ensuing media coverage, Australians are getting dumber. Read more>>

From fables to Facebook: Why do we tell stories? by Lauren Fuge

Storytelling is one of our most fundamental communication methods, for an obvious reason: narrative helps us cognise information. Telling intelligible, coherent stories to both ourselves and others helps our brains to organise data about our lives and our world. But when we askwhy stories are so effective at helping us cognise information, the answers are surprising: it seems that somewhere in the otherwise ruthless process of natural selection, evolution has wired our brains to prefer storytelling over other forms of communication. Read more>>

Plastic’s Reach by Kelly Burnes

Plastic. Seems it has extended its reach into the farthest corners of the universe. An earliest post described how plastic has changed our lives, for better…and for worse. ADD link to earlier post. That post largely reflected on the growing problem of plastic in the oceans and the effect on plant and animal life. Now, it seems that plastic threatens our freshwater lakes now too. Read more>>

Postcard from Spitzer: weather on 2M2228 is hot and cloudy by Kevin Orrman-Rossiter

Long distance weather reports are now a commonality. The report for 2MASSJ22282889-431026 is somewhat unusual. It forecasts wind-driven, planet-sized clouds, with the light varying in time, brightening and dimming about every 90 minutes. The clouds on 2MASSJ22282889-431026 are composed of hot grains of sand, liquid drops of iron, and other exotic compounds. Definitely not the first place to spend a summer holiday. Not that 2MASSJ22282889-431026 (or 2M2228 as it is known in The Astrophysical Journal Letters) will appear on a travel itinerary anytime soon. For 2M2228 is a brown dwarf, 39.1 light years from earth. Read more>>

The bacteria that live inside hurricanes by Charles Ebikeme

Seven miles above the Earth’s surface, where the weather is born, lies the troposphere – the lowest layer of Earth’s atmosphere. Up there, where the clouds dance around, are bacteria that can make it rain, and are important for the formation of clouds. The atmospheric microbiome is a concept and field of study that is gaining importance. As we come to grips with a changing climate and environment, understanding more and more our Earth ecosystem remains vital. With hurricane damage in the US and elsewhere seemingly on an exponential increase in recent decades, it is important to mitigate for the worst. Read more>>

Quantum computing: Australian researchers store data on a single atom! by Markus Hammonds

Computing is also an incredibly fast moving field of technology, and research is finally taking us towards the exciting world of quantum computing! Quantum computers will work using quantum bits, or qubits for short, which are analogous to the digital bits used in computers like the one which you’re using to read this article. Recently, a team of engineers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has successfully demonstrated, for the first time ever, how a single atom can be act as a qubit, effectively showing the first step in building an ultra fast quantum computer. And they might just have created the best qubit ever made. Read more>>

Happy 2014 from Markus, Charles, Kevin, Kelly, and Danica!

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Radia Perlman at LCA 2013

itgrrl — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 21:48:19 +0000

A little before 9am on Tuesday 29th January, I filed into ANU’s Llewellyn Hall along with approximately 700 other Linux.conf.au delegates to listen to the daily keynote speech. I’m now a little embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of Radia Perlman. A little over an hour later, I was a fangirl.

Radia delivered an engaging, funny, and highly-technical keynote address at LCA2013, and the audience of IT professionals and enthusiasts present lapped it up. In it, she placed the technical details of the network protocols she and her colleagues developed in an historical context. She half-jokingly explained that this was the only way in which anyone could hope to understand why the protocols we work with today include ‘features’ in their design that would otherwise seem crazy to an outside observer.

In delivering her keynote, Radia gave us not just the technical detail behind the development of networking protocols, but also wove in details from her creative side, as well as tidbits about her children’s involvement in her technical life. The crowd was delighted as Radia shared with us the poem that she created (an ‘Algorhyme’) shortly after devising the Spanning Tree Protocol in 1985 while at DEC. For as she says, “Every algorithm deserves an algorhyme…” (You can hear Radia reciting her AlgoRhyme in Dan’s video interview with Radia below, and read the text here.) There is also a recording of Radia’s daughter, Dawn Perlner, singing the Algorhyme set to music by Radia’s son, Ray Perlner. Radia also mentioned her son Ray’s involvement in the creation of an AlgoRhyme V2 to mark the creation of her most recent network protocol, TRILL.

Later in the week, I had the pleasure of heading off to lunch with Radia and a small group of fellow delegates during a break in technical sessions. She is engaging and thoughtful, and concerned as much with solutions for societal issues as solutions for thorny networking challenges. Radia is eternally self-effacing, and repeatedly claimed that she had “never done anything difficult

Cite this article:
Smith J (2013-02-06 21:48:19). Radia Perlman at LCA 2013. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 01, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/radia-perlman-at-lca-2013/

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The post Radia Perlman at LCA 2013 appeared first on Australian Science.

Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando

Danica Radovanovic — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 00:19:02 +0000

Keita Bando is a Digital Repository Librarian and Coordinator for Scholarly Communication database called MyOpenArchive we have presented MyOpenArchive earlier this year. Founded in September 2007, MyOpenArchive is an international Non-Profit Organization that advocates Open Access for never-before-published research papers on the web and provides Self-Archiving platform to enable better knowledge sharing in a way that’s easy to publish. We talked with Keita about Open Access (OA), scientific and scholarly publishing, and the current situation of the OA in the world.

Welcome! Would you, please, tell our readers a little bit more about yourself? What is your scientific background, and your professional scope?

Hello, Australian Science and its readers! Nice to meet you. I have been devoted my time on Open Access, Scholarly Communication, and recently Altmetrics. That’s why we (two colleagues and me) founded MyOpenArchive five years ago. An engineer and an designer helped me to develop my initial effort.

Also much of my time have been devoted on OA advocacy relations. For example, an presentation at 2008 Open Access Day, hosting Japanese website during Open Access Week 2009, and we hosted an event at that week. Furthermore, in 2011 we attended two conferences in Europe and the US, to make great acquaintances with those who deeply committed into Open Repository relations.

Besides, I have been devoted my time on Mendeley Advisor relations. Mendeley is a great service for me, and that’s why I advocate Mendeley in Japan. On one hand, Mendeley is famous as Reference manager. On the other hand, Mendeley is a Self-Archiving, Institutional Repository friendly service. Personally I am an OA Advocate who is interested in Mendeley Advisor relations.

As a volunteer I have been devoted my time on those relations, for I have a full-time job at an University (as a staff, but not a librarian).

How many individual and organizational ‘self-archiving’ units or members do you have within MyOpenArchive? What science disciplines the archive covers?

MyOpenArchive is not a sectional repository (arXiv, PMC etc). You can publish and share any type of research paper, of any section (Journal Article, Thesis or Dissertation, others) using Creative Commons License (or Public Domain). Users can upload material from any field, all science disciplines are present in the articles.

The first 3 years (2007-2010) we attracted 393 users and 210 posts. After 2010 renewal, 292 users and 166 posts. On the new site, we introduced Twitter/Facebook Sign in/up system to find that Twitter users overwhelmed Facebook users (214 vs. 78).

What do you think about “self archiving” today in the hyper connected networked surrounding and advancement of digital technologies? Do people deposit more or less?

Self archiving, so far, meant that librarians conduct the posting author’s final draft and/or others to Institutional Repository. These years, however, increasing number of users found their way to publish research papers to Mendeley, ResearchGATE, academia.edu and so on because those social networking services for researchers taps self archiving features into their site.

Thus, Self archiving can be achieved without IR. FigShare, PeerEvaluation, MyOpenArchive and numerous Social iR(s) represent Self archiving without help of librarians or IR. Researchers can do the self archiving, literally, on their own.

On the other, experimental efforts are increasing in order to match SNS for researchers and IR. For example, I am interested in DURA project, on which Mendeley and Cambridge University Library join forces upon JISC subsidy. Technology evolution let those services interact each other, and SWORD, Symplectic is critical on the Self archiving movement to advocate OA.

How do you see OA development in the next five years? How do you see the impact of open access on the science, education, and communication online?

In my opinion, altmetrics is the key to innovate OA relations. PLoS is the most important contribute to altmetrics innovation. It focuses on article level metrics, on which they can enhance the real time impact of individual papers. PLoS hires some of altmetrics guru, such as Cameron Neylon and Martin Fenner to the effort. Besides, PLoS talents like Mark Patterson and Peter Binfield (they are keen on altmetrics) are going to launch new OA journal (eLife Science, PeerJ) with some of Mendeley staff (Ian Mulvany, Jason Hoyt). Also, BMC show their understandings on OA journal. Hopefully Publication companies will increasingly submit altmetrics.com plans on and on.

I feel the importance of “being the part” of Open Access movement to know the global trend. Thus I am taking part in Facebook, LinkedIn, Google plus groups, while I follow them on Twitter to know the status of “person” as much as “information”. Most importantly, I can say that being the part of real friendship is critical. Last year I attended several international conferences as real friendship needed. “Why don’t we contribute” happens on these efforts, personally.

I know that you are very active online, collaborating with other Open Access chapters and nonprofit organisations. What are your current plans in the organisation and Open Access movement globally?

For example, Sridhar Gutam of Open Access India became allies with us, to share the Asia relations. On the partnership we hope to enhance the collaborations among those parties around the world.

We are going to attend Edinburgh Open Repositories 2012, on 9-13 July.

Berlin 10 Open Access Conference and Open Access Week also mean a lot for us, so this is going to be a “being the part” of discussion and real networking.

Thank you Keita for taking your time to talk with me!

Image source: flickr.com/photos/keitabando/3180077809/in/set-72157612285351143

Cite this article:
Radovanovic D (2012-06-20 00:19:02). Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando. Australian Science. Retrieved: May 01, 2024, from http://australianscience.com.au/interviews/open-access-for-open-knowledge-an-interview-with-keita-bando/

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The post Open Access for Open Knowledge: An Interview with Keita Bando appeared first on Australian Science.